TO MARKET! TO MARKET! by Anushka Ravishankar

Age 3-6

Since current British picturebooks are mostly published as co-editions by several countries, there is a tendency for the settings to lose their particular sense of place. To Market! To Market!, which originated in India, is an exception. This elegant picturebook tells the story of a little girl who goes to the market with change to spend, but who becomes so distracted by the things to look at that she forgets to buy anything. She is Indian and the bazaar she visits is, in fact, in Pondicherry. The celebratory illustrations by Emanuele Scanziani are full of precise observations of local life: five people riding on a bicycle, a Buddha-like man selling bangles, an elephant god wearing a garland of flowers, and characteristic masks, spices, fruit and seafood. The pictures transport you to somewhere real, and are full of incident for any child to pore over. Ravishankar is a well-known children’s poet, and her rhyming text travels well, with repetitions, and words whose size and shape illustrate their meaning, dancing about on the page. Moreover, the landscape format is unusually wide, and the spine is at the top, which is strange enough to be universally exciting.

(Tara Publishing £10.99; distributed by Frances Lincoln)

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